‘MAHA moms’ pushing for changes to US food system

THEY say the food industry is putting pesticides, dangerous food dyes and other toxic chemicals into the US food supply. They eschew highly processed foods, raise chickens and grow organic vegetables in their backyards. Some call themselves “crunchy moms”, a term once linked with 1970s liberal environmentalists.

- SHANNON OSAKA

But these aren’t traditional, left-wing environmentalists. They are the moms in the “Make America Healthy Again”, or MAHA, movement. They lean conservative, distrust vaccines and support Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. And they are changing what it means to be an environmentalist in the US — and generating growing momentum to change the country’s food system.

“This perception that the food industry specifically is exploiting families to profit over children’s health — you can see roots of that from long ago, looking at grassroots campaigns in Berkeley,” said Lindsey Smith Taillie, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “And that’s the same kind of mindset that you see today with MAHA.”

The MAHA label sprang into existence during the presidential election last year. When Kennedy dropped out of the race and threw his support behind Donald Trump, he did so with the tagline, “Make America Healthy Again”, transforming his concerns about the nation’s food and vaccine policies into a bite-size, Trump-friendly slogan. “We're going to become, once again, the healthiest nation on Earth,” Kennedy said at the time.

Over the next few months, the label surged in conservative political circles, according to a Washington Post analysis of social media posts. As Kennedy was folded into Trump’s orbit, MAHA became a way for members of the movement to recognise one another and share their support for Trump. But the movement had begun building years earlier, as parents became concerned about highly processed foods and vaccines.